Christie Blatchford: A grim look at the former Saint John Councillor facing child pornography charges

Donnie Snook facing child pornography charges

The undercover police officers who work the web in search of child abusers and pornographers are accustomed to being told lies.

As Toronto Police Sergeant Paul Krawczyk, one of the globe’s leading investigators in the grim world of online child exploitation, says, in the chat rooms such men frequent, they often exaggerate their access to children, the number of boys or girls they “have,” or the amount of pornography they have.

“A lot of the time, it’s bravado,” Sgt. Krawczyk says.

And that’s where Donald (Donnie) Snook is alleged to be different.

“I never would have guessed all that stuff [could be] true,” Sgt. Krawczyk told Postmedia in a telephone interview this week. “I have never seen it.”

Mr. Snook is a 40-year-old Saint John, N.B., man who appears to have constructed his entire life around his sexual appetite.

I never would have guessed all that stuff [could be] true

Though he now faces eight charges — possessing and making child pornography, including images of an unidentified boy who was under 14 at the time of the alleged abuse, and three counts of sexual touching — other alleged victims have since come forward to police, Postmedia has learned.

Additional charges are expected.

Mr. Snook was a popular city councillor, one of only two incumbents to be re-elected last spring, who rode to office on the strength of his community activism.

He was also the executive-director of the Inner City Youth Ministry, a charity affiliated with the local Anglican church which operates after-school clubs, a hot lunch program called the Chicken Noodle Club for the students of three city schools, sends underprivileged youngsters to summer camps and runs swimming and hockey programs.

Even at city council, Mr. Snook was known for his constant advocacy on behalf of children and youth. Just one of his many motions, made two years ago, asked city staff to investigate mentorship and recreational opportunities for vulnerable youth.

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And, as one of four recently unsealed search warrants reveals, Mr. Snook was apparently also a long-time foster parent with the province.

The Jan. 18 warrant sought “the complete file of Donald Snook as foster parent”, “files of all foster children in Donald Snook’s care” and “All files of disclosure made by children pertaining to Donald Snook.”

A provincial court judge ordered the N.B. ministry of social development to hand over Mr. Snook’s records.

He was arrested Jan. 9 at his home, where RCMP broke down the door, due as an unsealed warrant puts it “to exigent circumstances,” meaning Mr. Snook allegedly had a boy inside police believed “could be at risk”.

Earlier that day, while online with Sgt. Krawczyk and offering to “cam” (video camera) with a boy after school, the user alleged to be Mr. Snook told the officer “somon [someone] at door..s u latr?”

The someone was an undercover Saint John officer, who rang the doorbell at the precise moment the user reported hearing it.

By this point, Mr. Snook was under surveillance, with a camera posted on a power pole giving a view of the front entrance of his house.

He resigned from council Jan. 17 and has been suspended from his $52,000-a-year position with the youth ministry.

Mr. Snook had been in Sgt. Krawczyk’s sights for 22 months, “the longest I’ve ever been after someone online.”

The investigation began in March of 2011, when Sgt. Krawczyk first chatted with a user who said he lived in New Brunswick and who downloaded 48 files showing “prepubescent males engaged in various sex acts with adult males.”

The user said he had access to three boys and gave their ages.

I treat them like gold … they are little princes

Sgt. Krawcyzk contacted the Saint John force and officers tracked the Internet provider address to a Martha Avenue house.

But when a search warrant was executed there two months later, officers found the residents to be a perfectly regular family, with no child pornography on their password-protected wireless network.

“This meant an unknown person accessing the home network … without the password was hacking into their Wi-Fi connection,” the warrants say.

The user then went silent for several months, but surfaced again in the fall of 2011, and contacted Sgt. Krawczyk again.

Meantime, in a stellar example of the inter-jurisdictional co-operation that is the norm in this sort of policing, Constable Gordon Redfurn, of the Saint John’s family protection unit and a child-pornography expert, was involved, and by November last year, the RCMP’s specialist Internet Child Exploitation (ICE) unit based in Fredericton were now the lead investigators.

On Nov. 21, Mr. Snook and his Martha Avenue house were formally identified for the first time in the warrants.

ICE unit officers then even did tests near several Martha Avenue addresses, matching signal strengths with various laptops. The power-pole camera went up on Nov. 29, enabling the police to be sure that when Sgt. Krawczyk was chatting with the user, Mr. Snook was actually in the house.

Chat logs contained in the warrants reveal the user alleged to be Mr. Snook as terrified of being found out (“I don’t ever want to be caught, as u can understand,” he said once) but unable to stop himself (“no pill on earth will control me honestly”), self-delusional (“I NEVER hurt,” he said of how he treated boys. “I treat them like gold … they are little princes”) and realistic (“I have … boys I’m grooming right now”).

But perhaps the most telling — and chilling — remark was this: “the hunt of my life,” he told Sgt. Krawczyk last March 23 of his quest for boys. “God it’s a wonder I can do anything else.”